As creators of stories, be they novels or graphic novels or comics, we all have heard the adage “write what you know”. It's been drummed into our minds to the point that its cold fingers have our impostor syndrome in a deathgrip every time we venture our to write what we can't possibly know: fantasy, sci fi, historical, or plain incorporating characters different from who we are or who we know.

And I'm going to say the adage is correct.

But not in that way!

You're supposed to write what you know, because you're supposed to know it before you write about it. That's all there is to it. And knowing about it means doing the work. Doing the research. If what you want to write about isn't properly researched, then you run the risk of losing the audience that DOES know about what you're writing or, even worse, insult them because you've used awkward stereotyping to represent them or what they love or what they do.

I remember cringing in advance every time I heard a movie coming out from Hollywood, featuring Greeks or psychologists. Fortunately I'm not aware of any that features both. Not because I wouldn't love to see that on the big screen, but because 99% of the times my cultural and ethnic identity was abused and/or simply not understood. You could tell the writers of the movie script had never bothered to talk to a Greek person, let alone visit Greece to watch how Greek people are and interact.

For the shrinks, with a few shining outliers in terms of movies, I could see that the script writers had never had a session in their lives, knew nothing about what it means to be a professional in the mental health field, and relied on stereotypes to represent a profession that's incredibly diverse as a one-tone monolith. (Looking at you, Lethal Weapon, among others).

Sometimes though, there's a lot of laughter to be had (the Greek spoken in Xena, the Warrior Princess is the stuff of memes, and there are mega compilations that have Greek speakers in stitches), and I'm thankful for it! Making someone laugh with true mirth is a blessing.

I believe this isn't a result of the writers hating Greeks or shrinks (or any other group that's misrepresented thus). It's just that they didn't do their research. Or if they did, it was so superficial that actual understanding of the material just wasn't there.

This doesn't mean that good research means that everything everywhere must ALWAYS be accurate. One of the best representations of modern Greeks in comics can be found in Asterix at the Olympic Games! You could tell that Goscinny and Uderzo had either been to Greece or spoken to actual Greeks and interacted with them enough, learned from them enough, to be able to organically write the Greek characters in a way that is funny, modern in attitudes, and historical where it counts.


This is not the most representative page of what I describe, but it's the best I could find.

Doing the proper research only guarantees that you will know your stuff when it comes to what you want to write about. How you write about it or how you use it, is up to you.

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